Re: Experience with HP Smart Array P400 and SATA drives?

On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 9:05 AM, Mario Weilguni <mweilguni(at)sime(dot)com> wrote:
> In fact, for this system we're currently going to RAID10, I'm convinced now.
> With other systems we have, RAID5 is a safe option for one reason, the
> machines are clusters, so we have (sort of) RAID50 here:
> Machine A/RAID5 <-- DRBD --> Machine B/RAID5
>
> Seems reliable enough for me. But in this case, the machine will be
> standalone, and so RAID5 might really not be the best choice.
>
> However, I'm pretty sure we'll have the same problems with RAID10, the
> problem seems to have to do with P400 and/or SATA drives.

Yeah, I'm thinking there's something off in your system and until you
resolve it you're going to have issues. I'd check the following:

firmware on RAID controller
how it runs with a couple of SAS drives in RAID-1 or RAID-0 (just for testing)
OS version / kernel version / driver version. especially compared to
your customer's machine. See how much of his environment you can
clone until performance goes up where it should be. Then change one
thing at a time until you break it again. I'm sure everyone here would
like to know what makes a P400 fast or slow.

Or, if you don't have time to mess with it, just order an escalade or
areca card and be done with it. :)